Enstar parent Semco profits rise for quarter; gas utilities show improvement

Allen Baker, PNA contributing writer

Semco Energy Inc., parent of Enstar, showed improved earnings for the first quarter of the year, with profits up 24 percent to $11.3 million.

The gain came mostly from the gas distribution arm of the business, which includes Enstar and a similar gas utility in Michigan. Semco is based in Farmington Hills, Mich. Operating income for the segment was $30.2 million, up from $28.0 million a year ago.

Temperatures on average were about 7 percent warmer than normal in the two regions where Semco sells natural gas, but the same was true a year ago, so that balanced out. Still, if the winter had been a normal one, profits would have been $2.4 million higher.

The company’s construction services business posted a smaller loss for the quarter, $1.3 million versus $2.1 million. The division normally loses money in the winter since little underground work is done then in northern regions of the country.

Earnings in information technology services and propane, pipelines and storage were essentially flat. Those operations combined brought in less than a million dollars. Operating revenue was $156.9 million, up 5 percent from the same quarter of 2001.